


Mixtapes and Meanings

by slipper007



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Universe, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Idiots in Love, Led Zeppelin References, Love Confessions, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Mixtape, Song: Fool in the Rain (Led Zeppelin), Song: Ramble On (Led Zeppelin), Song: Tangerine (Led Zeppelin), hopefully it can make someone happy, not enough Sam in this i'm sorry, walkman music player, yeah not gonna lie I liked this more before posting it but what can you do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipper007/pseuds/slipper007
Summary: Just some soft DeanCas to get you through the day :)Castiel bakes some pies and listens to the mixtape. Dean wonders if Castiel understands it.Prompt: Monotony, Oven, Music player.Listen to the mixtapehere on Spotifyorhere on YouTube
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Mixtapes and Meanings

**Author's Note:**

> I made the mixtape for this fic based off of the show, the characters, and what would fit on a real cassette tape. If you have any questions about the songs, I would be more than happy to talk about it!
> 
> Side One is 31:06 long and has _Ramble On_ , _Stairway to Heaven_ , _Tangerine_ , _Fool in the Rain_ , _Communication Breakdown_ , and _Ten Years Gone_.  
> Side Two is 35:30 long and has _Good Times Bad Times_ , _D'yer Mak'er_ , _Nobody's Fault but Mine_ , _What Is and What Should Never Be_ , _Rain Song_ , _Over the Hills and Far Away_ , and _Thank You_.
> 
> You can listen to it on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2OeAYSln6b8bWCur7rkn1T?si=scXXQVQoQDyVBPV8-H93WQ) or [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgqjmMVTwGZZTYw4pJZqP9nzPszNhg9W)

After about the fourth batch of pie crust dough, making it began to wear on Castiel. It was all well and good in theory, making the crust from scratch, and he knew it would be appreciated, but presently his desire to ever look at the ingredients again was waning rapidly.

He needed something to break up the monotony. Anything.

He washed his hands and dried them well before heading down to Sam’s room. He knocked softly and Sam turned to him as he pulled the mixtape out of an interior pocket of his jacket.

“Is there a way to play this outside of my truck?”

“Hey, Cas! Yeah, one moment.”

Sam opened up the drawer to his desk and pulled out what looked to Castiel like a small plastic box. He held it out and indicated to a few different buttons. 

“This one will open the tray, here’s your volume, and to rewind it all you need to do is…”

Castiel nodded along as Sam spoke, and he took the box when it was held out to him. It was a comfortable weight and fit nicely in his hand.

“Oh, you’re going to need some headphones for it, too. I think we have some in the library that you could use.”

Castiel thanked him and retrieved the headphones before heading back to the kitchen. 

Now armed with Robert Plant, Castiel went back to making pie crusts. He had started out only planning to make one pie but had rapidly realized that pie crusts were a little more complicated than he had believed. The first batch of crust had cracked when he had rolled it out. The second had been too sticky. The third, he had forgotten the pie weights. The fourth had made it to the oven and was nearly done, but he worried that something had gone wrong. The fifth was waiting in the refrigerator and the sixth sat in a bowl in front of him.

The first two tracks of the tape he breezed through as he worked the dough. Somewhere in the middle of _Tangerine_ he caught himself moving to the beat. 

_“Tangerine, Tangerine, living reflection from a dream,”_ Castiel sang under his breath, shifting into mumbling as he focused on rolling up and then dividing the dough. _“I was his love…. and now a thousand years between.”_

The song shifted into the instrumental outro and Castiel, content, moved to put the ball of dough in the refrigerator to rest when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh!”

Castiel jumped and nearly dropped the disc of pie crust when he saw Dean leaning against the table, a broad grin tugging at his lips and his eyes twinkling with a fondness Castiel couldn’t describe but it set off a warmth low in his chest. He rapidly pulled the headphones off and left them around his neck.

“You’re listening to your tape.”

Castiel felt his cheeks flush and he looked away. “Yes, uh, Sam let me borrow this music player.”

“It’s a Walkman… You know, nevermind.”

Dean walked forward as _Fool in the Rain_ started up and Castiel felt his heart flutter.

_Oh, baby_

“What do you think of it?” Dean asked, his tone cautious. Perhaps guarded was a better term. Castiel couldn’t imagine why, he couldn’t make eye contact.

“It’s good. I like the songs on it.”

Dean had a small smile. Castiel could tell even without looking that it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Do you understand it?”

Castiel thought for a moment. He understood the story behind each of the songs he had listened to so far today: the singer being unable to settle down, wanting to change but fearing it may be too late to do so, feeling a distance between himself and his love, and then came _Fool in the Rain_ still audible from his headphones.

_And the warmth of your smile starts a burning  
And the thrill of your touch gives me fright  
And I'm shaking so much, really yearning  
Why don't you show up and make it alright, yeah?  
It's alright right_

Oh.

He took a breath and bit his lower lip, sorting out his thoughts.

The oven beeped and broke the tension as Plant kept singing about love.

Castiel and Dean, both eager to escape the situation, turned to address the beeping at the same time, hands brushing as they both opened the oven door. Castiel reached in to grab the tin and pulled out an apple pie and a cherry pie.

“Looks good,” Dean said approvingly, looking at the crisp top and bubbling juices. “Didn’t know you liked pie though. What’s the occasion?”

“I don’t really,” Castiel said quietly. “But you do.” Castiel looked up, still thinking about the tape. “You love them. And I love you.”

It was met with silence, and for a heartbeat Castiel wondered if he had been wrong in his interpretation. Maybe he didn’t understand after all.

“So, you did understand it,” Dean said softly, their roles reversed as he was now unable to meet Cas’ eyes. Castiel’s panic subsided slightly.

Castiel mimicked Dean’s position, leaning against the island next to him as he tried to think of where to go from here.

“Why…” Dean seemed to be struggling with the same issue. “Why didn’t you say something? If you knew.”

“I knew, deep down, but I didn’t let myself believe that you felt the same way,” Castiel confessed. “I thought maybe I was looking too closely at it, that I was making it into something it wasn’t because I wanted it to be true.”

Dean nodded and wet his lips, nothing to say.

In the silence, Castiel could hear Plant from the headphones.

_Oh, my heart it sinks to the ground_  
_And the storm that I thought would blow over_  
_Clouds the light of the love that I found, found_

Castiel hit the stop button and took the headphones off. _Fool in the Rain_ was about a man standing on one corner and his lover on the other. In essence, miscommunication. It was oddly fitting, he thought. But the song wasn’t sad or awkward. Rather, it was exciting and vibrant. It saw the humor of the situation and the man made the best of it and ran to his lover despite the rain. Castiel wondered, for a long moment, how he and Dean could reunite despite this rain.

He picked the Walkman back up and rewound it before hitting play. After placing it on the island, he turned the volume all the way up so that they could both clearly hear the song through the tinny headphones.

_Ramble On_ filled the room and the space between them. Even though the message was about not settling down, drifting and travelling and the threat of loss, Castiel hoped that Dean understood his meaning.

_“Ah, sometimes I grow so tired,”_ Dean sang along with the recording. He reached out, tentatively. _“But I know I've got one thing I got to do.”_

Castiel felt the warmth of a calloused hand in his own and breathed a sigh of relief.

Dean didn’t speak until the song had finished, but as it died out, he turned to Castiel and the smile was back. A little soft, a little uncertain, but a start. A new start for both of them.

“I love you,” Dean said, looking at their entwined hands.

Castiel felt the warmth from before in his chest at the words and a lopsided smile pull at his lips as Dean looked up and their gazes met.

Without saying anything more, they shifted a little closer and took in the music, the scents of apples and cinnamon filling the air.


End file.
